warehouse

John McG · Post by **John McG** » Fri, 6. May 16, 10:00

I have just built a warehouse (although I am not sure how best to use it).
In the Mission menu I get the message "assign subordinate trade ship". I have already assigned a Lyranea, a Midir, a Rahanas energy, a Rahanas Liquid, a Scaldis and a Titurel Vanguard, and am still getting the message "assign a trade ship". Is there an error here, or am I missing something?

Marvin Martian · Post by **Marvin Martian** » Fri, 6. May 16, 10:25

the hint only check for ressources the station need to pass the tradeship notice, the Warehouse only have tradeware - thats the reason why this won't working at the moment

RAVEN.myst · Post by **RAVEN.myst** » Fri, 6. May 16, 11:20

That particular upkeep mission is currently bugged - it will show up no matter what, so you can safely ignore it.

John McG · Post by **John McG** » Fri, 6. May 16, 12:23

Have I wasted my credits buying a warehouse then, or is it still of some use?

Marvin Martian · Post by **Marvin Martian** » Fri, 6. May 16, 12:45

that "mission" doesn't effect the way it works

i assume you have configure wares to trade at the manager? so the ships should buy and sell?!

RAVEN.myst · Post by **RAVEN.myst** » Fri, 6. May 16, 13:09

John McG wrote:Have I wasted my credits buying a warehouse then, or is it still of some use?

Well, yes and no. If you want to use it as a centralised mining base, it will work great. If you want it purely for storage (or for automatically accumulating particular wares), it's also fine.

If, however, you want to use it as a trading station, then see http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=389178

martimus · Post by **martimus** » Fri, 6. May 16, 16:10

As RAVEN.myst said, the warehouse works great as a central mining location. I also use it for intermediate wares, but it doesn't work nearly as well for that. The warehouse trade ships aren't very aggressive at buying your own wares, but they do get around to it eventually.

lostboron · Post by **lostboron** » Sat, 5. Aug 17, 16:04

This bug is still present in 4.10. I'm just glad I didn't assign the warehouse 6 ships before coming to the forum !

Nikola515 · Post by **Nikola515** » Sat, 5. Aug 17, 21:43

John McG wrote:Have I wasted my credits buying a warehouse then, or is it still of some use?

In theory warehouse is good idea but do to some rare bugs it makes it difficult to work sometime. Assign ships to manager is just cosmetic and it wont affect your gameplay at all. All thought I did notice that ships get stuck when trading energy and other wares. I isolated problem to manager money account so taking all money and giving it back will restart ships (even mining ships). You will need to exit manager menu before giving money back. Best uses for warehouse is mining and selling ore/gas . They are pretty good money makers early in game

Post by **Sparky Sparkycorp** » Sat, 5. Aug 17, 22:54

RAVEN.myst wrote: If, however, you want to use it as a trading station, then see http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=389178

A bit of related info here to avoid it looking like a necro there:

4.10 RC1 Introduced a fixed for ships taking unnecessary detours into dangerous areas "especially in Home of Light". I believe that aimed to fix the problem with M Traders suiciding into HoL Xenon zones. RC1 arrived after this post but I can't remember now if there was causality. Long story short, I am not sure that M Traders assigned to stations are still unsafe in HoL.

4.10 introduced an undocumented change to Warehouse price management, but I don't know if it had a substantive impact on profits or not.

RAVEN.myst · Post by **RAVEN.myst** » Sun, 6. Aug 17, 10:48

Sparky Sparkycorp wrote: 4.10 RC1 Introduced a fixed for ships taking unnecessary detours into dangerous areas "especially in Home of Light". I believe that aimed to fix the problem with M Traders suiciding into HoL Xenon zones. RC1 arrived after this post but I can't remember now if there was causality. Long story short, I am not sure that M Traders assigned to stations are still unsafe in HoL.

A couple of months back, I got around to testing this for a couple of days (and then got bored again and went back to X3AP and other time-eaters, hehe), and found that indeed the station-bound M-traders (the ones previously prone to straying deep into the Arctic and perishing there) are now viable in the Home of Neon Lights system, and work about as well as I expected them to, given how the vast majority of station in the system are right on the ring road. I did, however, once (odd in itself, as it should either be happening once in a while, or never at all, surely?) notice two of my M-sized containerships (therefore, no reason to be there, as the hydrogen facility there will only trade with energy and liquid carriers) straying up North (not as far as previously, though) and making it back, while being totally ignored by Xenon surrounding them (and experienced this myself in the Skunk on another occasion, with considerable shooting required, as in 3 kills, before I managed to catch their attention) - I suspect a bit of an inelegant hack fix here, but at least it DOES sort out the unwarranted attrition. Furthermore, with those little joyrides now curtailed, not only are ships not going there to die all the time, but also their productivity is improved, as there is no longer loss of income to all that wasted time.

Sparky Sparkycorp wrote:4.10 introduced an undocumented change to Warehouse price management, but I don't know if it had a substantive impact on profits or not.

Hmmm, looks like I may need to spend another day or two in that game to check this out - I meant to try a (mining) warehouse again as an early-game money-spinner, but found that food, booze and drugs did too well and pursued that route instead. However, if something changed in the way WHs handle pricing, it may be worth checking out, as it can just about ONLY be an improvement...

Post by **Sparky Sparkycorp** » Sun, 6. Aug 17, 23:04

RAVEN.myst, purveyor of fine, amusing posts to the rescue

Thanks for mentioning you observations on saver M Trader travel - that's great to hear. If you do have a chance to test the trading economics, that would be great. Thank you in advance!

RAVEN.myst · Post by **RAVEN.myst** » Mon, 7. Aug 17, 11:59

Sparky Sparkycorp wrote:If you do have a chance to test the trading economics, that would be great. Thank you in advance!

You're always welcome

I did recently briefly load up the relevant save, but got bored almost immediately (took under 5 mins) and went straight to an X3AP experiment I am conducting - however, I will grit my teeth and try again (in the next day or two) to spend enough time in X:R to build and test a warehouse in this role (I really wish I could run X:R in the background without having to resort to windowed mode, though I may have to do so, so that I can continue with X3AP while I wait for the necessary stuff to happen, heheh.) If warehouses as trade stations are indeed now viable (though I am not holding my breath - I'm told blue isn't my colour in any case), this could transform an aspect of the game.

RAVEN.myst · Post by **RAVEN.myst** » Thu, 17. Aug 17, 19:11

Sparky Sparkycorp wrote:If you do have a chance to test the trading economics...

I have now *finally* gotten around to giving this a go - my apple-orgies for the delay! ("In a day or two", quoth he... Yeah, right!) [Been engrossed in X3AP and EVE - and sadly, my X3AP experiment didn't yield the hoped-for result...]

Anyhow, I have built said warehouse (tradehouse?) and left it running for a couple of hours with a 5/5/5 manager, a healthy budget for buying wares, and no assigned freighters, in order to test "walk-in trade" at first. I am encouraged by the fact that buy and sell prices can be set separately (is this new? Or did I previously miss it since all other stations have only a single price setting?), but I don't expect amazing results in this mode (some pricing tweaking may be needed - I rather suspect that NPCs will only buy below average price as they do in previous Xs) - stock has begun to come in (very slowly) at least, so it's off to a start. I was originally planning to test in phases - first opening the hangar doors to passing merchants, then switching to "aggressive trading" using my own freighters, but I've since decided it will be better to let this test run over a long time, so I shall shortly set up another warehouse (in a different system, so they don't step on each other's toes - the disadvantage being that it will be something of an apples-to-pears comparison.) I'm rather more optimistic about this approach, so long as the freighters can overcome their overwhelming preference to buy before selling (I suspect some price micromanagement on my part will be necessary - but this is a good thing, I believe, because if using such trade posts as a significant or even major income source, they ought to require *some* work...)

I'll post updates as findings come in...

Post by **Sparky Sparkycorp** » Thu, 17. Aug 17, 20:14

You da man, thanks!

(manual price setting was available in the initial release)

RAVEN.myst · Post by **RAVEN.myst** » Thu, 17. Aug 17, 21:35

Sparky Sparkycorp wrote:(manual price setting was available in the initial release)

Yes, I remember about manual price setting itself (in fact, I remember, perhaps even correctly, that there was no auto-pricing as there is for the other station types) - but what I'm struggling to remember is whether separate buy and sell prices were already implemented at the time. In any case, already there has been some modest movement in both directions while trading "passively", so I'm thinking I may consider this phase a modest/provisional success, and phase over from that to the active trading approach already after all, instead of running separate tests (or perhaps initiate a passive test at my NEXT warehouse - this way I should accelerate my income now, to facilitate property developments.)

Long(er)-term plan: to set up TradeHouses in OmLy and Albion, perhaps also in Cold Star and Toride (I'll be reviewing the stations in those systems shortly, to decide whether this will be viable [EDIT: Update: not viable, it's all Cell Fab Matrices with the occasional mining station thrown in - not enough interconnectedness - potential food and drink market, but not my focus, so not now]), and in so doing implement a trade-based instead of industry-based economy (though I'll keep my food, booze, and drug productions running - gotta maintain a certain standard of living, after all

)

RAVEN.myst · Post by **RAVEN.myst** » Fri, 18. Aug 17, 16:05

UPDATE:

Well, running the TradeHouse in 'passive trading' mode (ie. passing trade, no owned freighters), the station DID make some very little profit: over the course of [checks stopwatch, frowns, taps it in ennui, sotto voce "Damn..."] er... several hours, it increased its manager's cash account (initial budget 5M) by ~300k, and obviously no transfers have come in as a result over that period of time. "Underwhelming" is an accurate description, but at least it ran at a (slight) profit. Good.

So, now I have added some energy and container freighters (the wares I am currently handling at this warehouse), and been fiddling some more with prices. However, looking at the available trade opportunities, and from previous experience, my optimism about the warehouse as a trade post is rapidly diminishing: unlike in previous Xs, in Rebirth industry is quite profitable even when buying resources at way above average price and selling products at below average. However, when purely trading, one NEEDS to buy low and sell high, and the margins just don't seem to be there - in fact, at the moment it is more work to manually keep tweaking the warehouse's price thresholds than to simply have some free-trading freighters (which can operate inter-system, unlike station-bound freighters) and use the "dealfinder" menu.

I shall, however, continue the experiment (no reason not to, while I get on with other stuff in-game

) - to be continued...

PS, to moderators: I don't mean to hijack the thread, I merely think that keeping this info all together here with the OP's original questions, makes sense in terms of relevance and "relatedness". However, if not, my apple-orgies, and I guess I'll find the split-thread soon enough.